Doomed Planet

Green for danger

Charles Moore on a new British television program which explores the misanthropy, exaggerations and damage of environmentalism:

What the Green Movement Got Wrong: Greens come to see the error of their ways

For many years, Channel 4 would not have dared devote an hour to the errors of environmentalism

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this programme is that it was made at all. It shows how the Green monolith has cracked. For many years, Channel 4 would not have dared devote an hour to the errors of environmentalism; or, if it had done so, it would have wrapped it in the cordon sanitaire always put round anything considered Right-wing, stating that this was a "provocative" and "personal" view.

This was no such programme. Instead, it was a platform for every sinner that repenteth. Former hippy Greens, directors of Greenpeace, the chairmen of the Copenhagen Climate Council and the like, queued up to admit error. Their reasons for doing so were interesting. None of them repudiated all their previous ideas. All continue to believe that there are serious environmental threats to the welfare of life on earth and most seem to be devoting their lives to addressing them. But, as one put it, environmentalists over the past 40 years have "failed to achieve Job One, which was to protect the planet".

At least three central reasons were identified.

…

If the drift of this programme is correct, the consequences for politics will be large. All the main political parties have chosen to put their eggs in the frail, Fairtrade, hand-weaved basket of Greenery, imposing rising levies to develop "renewable" sources of power which cannot do the job demanded of them. The basket is starting to break. There will be a political prize, I suspect, for the first party which dares to put its eggs elsewhere.